10 Things I Hate About You by Maris Kingfisher

For me, “coming out” was a painful experience with a common theme of betrayal, both blatant and complicit.

I moved to Nebraska when I was 18 to serve in a Christian Leadership program.  I didn’t know anyone and I quickly became reliant on the church for a sense of direction and purpose for my life. 

I invested my time, money, and focus into this church for over 10 years; doing everything from “cleaning ministry” to preaching.  This church was my community, my family, my home.

Here is just one example of blatant and complicit betrayal:  The summer before I “came out,” I led worship at a camp for foster kids for the second year in a row.  I was asked to come back the next year because I was “anointed, called by God, and could hear the voice of God.”

However, when I came out, leadership used church policy to disqualify, discredit, and discard me from participating and associating in ministry and leadership.  And when I told my best friend, she told me that I was “no better than a pedophile, a pervert in God’s eyes.”  Needless to say, that friendship is over.

Due to countless situations such as these, I have a complicated relationship with the church, with religion, and with identifying as a Christian.  I struggled to articulate my thoughts on “coming out” and the damage done by the church, so I borrowed some verbiage from a poem that inspired me in my younger years, (written by Katarina Stratford about Patrick Verona) from the 1999 film: 10 Things I Hate About You.

I hate the way you talk to me

I hate the way you stare

I hate how you discredited me AND

How you say you care.

I hate the way you treated me

I hate it that you lie

I hate that you made me cry

BUT MOST OF ALL, I hate the way I don’t hate you,

not even a little bit, not even at all.

You see, despite your cruel words and all your wrong deeds, Ohana means family, family means no one gets left behind or forgotten.  I hope one day you will join the Right side of history and choose to Truly love unconditionally.

In closing, until homophobes stop catastrophizing consensual love between adults, we will continue to celebrate National Coming Out Day.

Cheers!